Call for a Demilitarized Nicosia

Since February 2006 we have been putting forward the demand “in the process leading to the solution: Demilitarized Nicosia” through various actions and demonstrations. Today this is an issue which is discussed extensively and has come to an important point of being accepted by the society.
We are going on the streets for the eleventh time with the demand of “Demilitarized Nicosia” saying:
“DEMILITARIZED NICOSIA RIGHT NOW!”
As Assembly for a Demilitarized Nicosia, we are bringing once again to the streets our demand for a Demilitarized Nicosia, a Demilitarized Cyprus. We are meeting at 14:30 on Saturday 27th February 2016 in the buffer zone in front of Ledra Palace / Home for Cooperation and we will walk together, parallel to the ceasefire line passing from Sarayönü square at 15:00 and giving a press conference at 15:30 at Ledra (Lokmacı) buffer zone. Then we will walk pass Eleftheria Square at 16:00 to reach Home for Cooperation again at 16:30… We are hoping to see amongst us all political parties and organizations supporting the antimilitarist struggle…
For this purpose, we are meeting at 18:30 on Monday 22nd February at Home for Cooperation in the buffer zone to discuss what we will be doing on Saturday and we are inviting all antimilitarist organizations and activists from both sides…
While preparing to go on the streets for the eleventh time we are saying:

Why is there a border dividing this city?
Do we really want to harm each other?
Were we ever as different as they taught us to be?

This city wasn’t divided because of the different languages we spoke; it was a power struggle between competing elites.

For a few it was more preferable to have all the power in half an island than share the power in the whole island. They chose to separate people into greeks and turks, into christians and muslims. They then made minorities such as Maronites, Armenians and Latins choose a camp. And they have marginalised and excluded the Roma and later on the recently arrived communities of migrants and refugees.

Our daily lives is not their playground. Nobody should be forced to live under constant threat, to live in a city with 5 different armies pointing their guns at us, supposedly protecting us from each other.

Somehow they find space for all their armies in a single strip, but when we try to meet, they dare tell us we block the street.

We are against all nationalist and imperialist armies, post-colonial military forces and alliances, as well as states’ repressing mechanisms and authoritarian institutions. Nobody should be a soldier of power elites, never and nowhere.

Time to reclaim what the armies took from us; Our city, our neighbourhoods and our lives.

This year, one year further away from the events that created these borders and one year closer to their dissolution, we decided to march together throughout the city of Nicosia, from the north to the south of this border that enters our lives and determines them.